Wonder Woman Returns

Given all the attention Wonder Woman has been getting lately, she just might steal the show from the upcoming Superman v. Batman. Initially, she appeared to be little more than an afterthought, a way to attract women to the second installment in the rebooted Superman series. However, the selection of Gal Gadot as the Amazonian warrior princess seems more a fulfillment of teenage boys' wet dreams than it does the feminist ideal originally envisioned by William Moulton Marston in 1941, although Marston seemed to enjoy his puerile fantasies as well.

To read this article by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker, Wonder Woman has undergone quite a transformation since she debuted in Sensation Comics in January, 1941. She followed pretty closely on the heels of Superman and Batman, which premiered in 1938 and 1939 respectively. Wonder Woman evolved considerably during the war to accentuate the American woman's role in WWII, combining feminism with patriotic duty. After the war, DC decided to domesticate Wonder Woman and she pretty much fell into obscurity until revived on the cover of a 1972 issue of Ms. magazine.

Wonder Woman once again came to embrace the values of feminism in the tumultuous 70s. Her increased popularity led to a television show starring Lynda Carter, who better fit the role than did Cathy Lee Crosby in a television movie in 1974. Plus, the television series took Wonder Woman back to her 1940s origin, whereas the previous movie had tried to fit her in the 70s.

This revival was short lived and Wonder Woman returned to comics and animated features, often in a supporting role. Interest peaked again in 2011 when NBC released a pilot with Adrianne Palicki in the lead role, but scuttled the anticipated series. So now we have Gal Gadot trying to fit the warrior princess's costume. She hasn't exactly been a fan favorite, but then the new movie has been under a cloud of criticism ever since it was first proposed and its release pushed forward again to 2016.

Superman v. Batman is more or less based on Frank Miller's 1986 graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns, in which an aged Batman finds himself using highly advanced technology, essentially turning himself into Iron Man, to fight the ageless Superman in a Battle Royale. Wonder Woman was reduced to a helpless spectator, as she had lost her golden lasso as well as her eternal youth. I guess that kind of cynicism doesn't fit well in Hollywood, where youth is served once again.

It seems to me the door is still open to a new movie or television series that reflects the feminist struggle over the decades since her debut. Someone like Lynda Carter would be perfect for the role, as she has undergone her own metamorphosis since the 70s but hasn't appeared to have lost her beauty or her strength. Here she is visiting the Wonder Woman Family Museum in Bethel, Connecticut, much to the delight of the oldest son of William Moulton Marston.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

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